FATHOMING THE FREE WORLD
Brokhin, Yuri
One day last July my wife Tanya and I were discussing our latest everyday problems. I don't know why we chose the lobby of the Associated Press building as the site for our debate, but suddenly...
...I don't know why we chose the lobby of the Associated Press building as the site for our debate, but suddenly a young man in a Moscow-style suit approached us, smiled politely and said: "How nice it is in the middle of New York to hear such pure Russian swearing...
...She went from one store to another and, with furious tenacity, tried on dresses, coats, suits, and shoes (without any hope of buying anything, since we had no money...
...Then I found out that several of my acquaintances were leaving...
...An engineer friend of mine sent me a letter...
...they do not speak Yiddish, let alone Hebrew, do not practice Judaism, do not go to synagogues, and are not interested in the Jewish religion, history, or culture...
...and then turned to the Jewish question...
...No, I replied, "we're from another agency—we're Jews...
...They're very involved," I thought...
...She complained that the uniform of a watchman or an ice-cream man would transform my intellectual countenance, and if I took either job she would leave me forever...
...Doctors of sciences go to work as janitors, famous dancers starve, screenwriters unload barges to feed their families, and professional engineers lug bricks at construction projects...
...No one knows for what reasons the government has been refusing to let out the cameraman Mikhail Suslov, the Sinologist Vitali Rubin, the engineer Vladimir Slepak, and many other people who have nothing to do with "security...
...5" that says "Russian" or "Ukrainian...
...When the first groups of Jews wishing to emigrate appeared in 1969-70, the Soviet government did not yet consider the emigration problem a particularly serious one, and continued to let out people according to the well-known pressurecooker principle, under which the lid must be opened a little from time to time...
...But then a figure from the latest official statistics seems all the more astonishing...
...Suddenly, despite the vociferous antiZionist and anti-Israeli campaigns in the press, the reverse occurred...
...My son and I have worked like hell the whole day...
...Tanya suggested that she might look for a role in an X-rated movie, while I could go into the narcotics business.' It seemed to me that a stretch in an American prison would hardly strengthen our marriage...
...Five people—my friend's family—went into a butcher shop in Vienna and suddenly, one after the other, burst out laughing...
...In the end I didn't get the job, just as thousands •of other Jews with diplomas fail to get jobs, especially in the very cities where there is constant need for specialists...
...But they were poorly thought out and crude...
...Our explanation was that my wife was non-Jewish...
...It may seem paradoxical but it is a fact that many of them, by dint of their positions, are anti-Semites...
...But here I picked up something...
...In the afternoon the boss would convene a conference of the executive personnel of the administration, half of whom were Jews...
...Look at his restless eyes...
...I barely managed to get out of Israel...
...Then a Solomonic solution was found— don't let them out and that's all...
...I had never expected to see so many Jews at once...
...546 This psychological shock that hits a Soviet person upon his seeing the Western cornucopia can be understood only by people who have grown up on sliced ham and clothing from the Moscow Bolshevichka Factory...
...If it were up to me, I'd send you to Siberia...
...Indeed, 93 percent of Soviet Jews receive exit visas within two or three months without any great obstacles...
...At the same time, what could be more desirable than the discovery of a new world...
...Now"—the lady lowered her voice even more—"I have a problem: how do I get some crystal, silver, and several works of Faberge to the West...
...YURI BROKHIN In short, the next day we announced we were not going to Israel...
...The director of the castle began to teach us a song...
...THERE ARE frequent analyses in the Western press of the reasons for the rapid increase in Jewish emigration from the Soviet Union...
...Aleksandrovich...
...You don't know any diplomats, do you...
...In this regard the category of "verbal antiSemites" is of interest...
...In front of us a lady who was pleasant in all respects, whispered confidentially (after all, we were her people) : "Tomorrow a correspondent from the French newspaper Le Monde is coming to visit me...
...MY WIFE AND i defined the summer of 1972 as our "Roman holiday...
...You'll die...
...Does that mean our friend was exaggerating...
...As we waited in the Italian capital for our American visas, we could already taste our future conquest of the "Klondike...
...In this process the husband or wife tries to adopt the nationality of the non-Jewish spouse and then to record their future children as "non-Jewish...
...I think he's lost his mind," my wife whispered...
...Unsnapping her jaws, she said: "You'll get an answer within four months...
...AT THE VIENNA AIRPORT we were met by a friend from Moscow...
...So when the Boeing 747 touched on American soil, we sniffed the sweet scent of our forthcoming millions...
...In the Soviet Union we were called Kikes...
...A good many Jewish technocrats who hold good positions at factories, scientific institutes, and the ministries may not use such phrases, but mentally they regard their Jewishness as an impediment to their future career...
...Okay, we agree to take up this noble task...
...I began to look into the faces...
...The press conferences with Jewish celebrities that are often held in the Soviet Union are not just a show...
...In fact, a squabble had already flared up...
...One day I heard that an editor's position had opened up at one of the studios...
...Patronymic...
...What I do see is a surprising similarity between people's lives in Moscow and New York...
...There was, of course, an incredible din...
...Applications for departure to Israel poured onto the desks of OVIR by the thousands...
...Afterward he would call up his colleagues at the ministry and loudly fume: "I'm suf focating, the Kikes are coming from every direction...
...It turned out that they were following the baseball game between the Reds and the Mets...
...But an even greater number of people, in my opinion, had no ideological reasons whatsoever...
...One acquaintance, a construction engineer, declared at a meeting that was accepting him as a Party member: "Unfortunately, I am a Jew, but I promise to make every effort in the future to get rid of the characteristic traits of that nation...
...Anti-Semitism is manifested in its most overt form in Soviet society when one applies for a job...
...Certainly the decisive factor in these data is the intensive process of assimilation...
...I have also worked as a lecturer at the State University of New York, but I have yet to see the land of milk and honey here...
...What is this unlucky group...
...Israeli officials spoke with us and the next day they calmly let us go without any obstacle...
...Soon I'll be going to a synagogue...
...One thing is indisputable: anti-Semitism and tendencies toward assimilation have, to a large extent, a cause-and-effect relationship...
...the Odessan inquired...
...But I have spoken with many Soviet Jews who have left Israel and have read letters from people living there...
...And when cracks appeared in the dependable edifice of the Jewish scientific elite, the Party specialists on Jewish questions became seriously concerned...
...Naturally for Israel," I answered...
...Eventually his daughter married a Jew...
...Now I wonder whether New Yorkers could tear themselves away from the excitement of a sports event if missiles with atomic warheads were launched at the city...
...The "Kike woman"— his deputy on financial and economic questions— would come and the boss would discuss routine matters with her...
...Here is what the wife of a well-known screenwriter in Jerusalem writes (she is the daughter of a prominent Soviet movie director and had a very high living standard in the U.S.S.R...
...I was not a Zionist, I have never been a Communist, and I did not belong to the democratic opposition...
...Yet he continued to hire mostly Jews...
...So forget the doubts, and forward to the West...
...Most don't consider themselves Jews at all...
...On Oct...
...They had reason to believe this...
...I became a professor at the Berlitz school...
...With each year it becomes more complicated for Jews to enter higher educational institutions...
...I have met quite a few Jews who are deputy ministers, heads of ministry administrations, directors and chief engineers of plants and mines, managers of industrial trusts, and directors of design and research institutes...
...We had a cursory discussion about Brezhnev's visit to the U.S...
...My wife and I left inconspicuously...
...Don't get on the bus, they won't let you go then...
...In half an hour a mighty chorus was shak ing the old arches of the castle...
...The same mysterious world about which we, children of the cosmopolitan 20th century, had dreamed since childhood, about which we had read books and seen films, but which we had had almost no hope of visiting...
...Ivanov," I lied...
...There's nothing left in the apartment but bare mattresses...
...This is significant, because in the past I heard the following phrases: "If you want to become an anti-Semite, go to Israel...
...We have unexpectedly discovered in ourselves a sense of a unified nation that must be protected...
...I agreed (of course, lots of American FATHOMING THE FREE WORLD millionaires began as shoeshine boys), but here a conflict arose with my wife...
...And, imitating a sportscaster, I added: "'Afterwards, exchanging looks of contempt, the antagonists went their separate ways.' Or perhaps you'd like to chat for a while...
...After graduating from a film institute, I looked for a job for a long time...
...He called me aside and, looking around feverishly, asked: "Where are you headed...
...There must have been 200 or 300 people...
...And she barked toward the door: "Next...
...They try not to hire Jews, afraid they will be accused of pursuing an improper personnel policy...
...The situation became critical...
...At first I made fun of them...
...If one adds to this phenomenon the eternal Jewish passion for new things, the perpetual longing to seek a happiness that lies somewhere in faraway lands ("where we are not"), then the result will be the 90,000 people who have left in 1970-73 and the 100,000 awaiting their turn to leave...
...Now communications among people have taken on an explosive 544 character...
...M y case is more or less typical...
...We received our visas in two months, and in another 15 days we were on the plane from Moscow to Vienna...
...The New York HIAS service evaluated my education and skills and proposed to me a wide range of jobs, which began with watchman in a New Jersey bakery and ended with ice-cream man on Brighton Beach...
...This time the chief engineer of the administration would appear...
...Most of those in the send-off party too were to leave soon...
...Unfortunately, I cannot give an objective assessment of the situation in Israel, primarily because I have not been there...
...They firmly believed, without a single doubt, that in another month or two their turn would come to fly away...
...Everything seemed to be going well, but in these diplomatic phrases and the close study of my by no means Roman profile, I smelled something foul...
...Quite a few people bribe the police, who then issue them new passports with a nice "point No...
...According to official statistical data, 2,150,707 Jews were living in the Soviet Union in 1970, whereas in 1959 the Jewish population numbered 2,267,814...
...He began the workday by ordering his secretary, "Tell that Kike woman to come here...
...Today 83 percent of all Soviet Jews declare their native tongue to be Russian...
...A caprice of the political game, a bargaining counter in the hands of the powers, an ideologically based movement or maybe just a desperate, spontaneous rush by a mob...
...Do you by any chance work for TASS [Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union...
...And this did not occur on war fronts, in gas chambers, in prisons or emigrants' trains...
...In a ministry where I directed an industrial film, the head of the largest administraFATHOMING THE FREE WORLD tion was a Ukrainian...
...Meanwhile, my friend continued to de mand that we change our route and promised to give us the address of a Jewish organiza tion that would help us go to any Western country...
...The decision was made, three months later a fictitious invitation came from a friend who had left for Israel, and we were in the famous Kolpachny Lane, in front of OVIR [the visa office...
...On the other hand, the Soviet authorities consider them Jews and, with the aid of a powerful internal-passport system, clearly identify ethnic affiliation...
...It is war, after all...
...The boss [Brezhnev] has said firmly: `We'll give you Jews and you give us trade...
...Spinning in my head was a song that we had sung in school: "Stalin is our banner, Stalin is our happiness, Stalin is our father...
...On the streets, in the subway and on the buses are the same crowds of people with tired eyes, tormented by the endless commuting, driven crazy by the noise and filth of a giant city...
...The result is that for a Jewish office employee, a Jewish boss can be a worse enemy than a non-Jew...
...I'm going to complain," the Mustache persisted...
...Your first name...
...Toward evening everyone assembled in the hall...
...Okay," agreed the man, who turned out to be a Soviet journalist...
...And he said this with complete sincerity...
...I did not make a slip: I mean antiSemitic...
...I told my wife of tremendous things to come: (1) she could continue her professional career as an actress in Hollywood...
...That is why anti-Jewish tendencies depend to a large extent on the tastes of local managements...
...Later, more profound and more realistic appraisals of the Western world would come, but our first impressions were bound up with the "store-window syndrome...
...I'm drunk from the pleasure of touching these things," Tanya said...
...Strangely enough, it is precisely such a topsy-turvy turnabout that a person sometimes misses...
...However, by the next day it was different...
...Because of its high reputation, I discarded my blue jeans and put on the sober suit of a bank clerk...
...Measures to halt the emigration of the scientific intelligentsia were urgently drawn up...
...He does seem to have gone batty," I thought, and said, "We'll get in touch tomorrow...
...Some people bear this brand silently through life, resigning themselves to a civic inferiority complex, while others take active measures to get rid of their Jewishness...
...In a nutshell, as one would expect, for the Jews tragedy and comedy are inseparable...
...No matter what the future of Soviet Jews in Israel brings, I think the greatest difficulties in the absorption of newcomers will come now, when the flow of Soviet Jews is not decreasing, and the possibilities of their needs being met by the government of Israel, which was economically exhausted by the latest war, are extremely limited...
...The effort in such an overt form to organize a market for selling Jewish heads stirred indignation throughout the world and failed...
...They cite Israel's successes in the Six-Day War, the Leningrad hijacking trial, at which not one of the defendants pleaded guilty, anti-Semitism in the U.S.S.R., and many other things...
...asked the chief editor...
...Since then he has complained disconsolately: "Now the Kikes have broken through on the home front...
...We were becoming confused...
...The gist of it was roughly as follows: "Israel is our sun, Israel is our happiness, Israel is our joy, Israel is our life...
...Well, everything is clear as far as that is concerned," our new acquaintance declared...
...This type of "verbal anti-Semite," who really doesn't take a step without a Jewish assistant, constitutes a sizable percentage among high-level Soviet officials and serves as a kind of illustration of the ugliness of the phenomenon...
...Then he would give the secretary the next command: "Tell that Kike fellow to come here...
...Let me say that nothing special did happen, but the anticipation is always wonderful...
...When this is done, though, the bribed police officers warn: "But remember that if there is a pogrom, it won't be the passport that they beat up, but your nose...
...One day I heard they had begun to let people out...
...Another 23 persons were flying with us, and a crowd of at least 200, joyous and excited, saw us off at the Sheremetyevo International Airport...
...Let me through, my people are over there" said a man with a Georgian-looking mustache, trying to get ahead of everybody...
...In fact we were totally indifferent about where to go...
...Besides assimilation through marriage, a great many simply lose their passports and subsequently change their name and nationality...
...They spoke with me for a long time...
...6, when the war in the Middle East broke out, I was walking along Fifth Avenue and saw enormous crowds of excited people in front of television screens...
...Then please show me your passport," the chief editor concluded, making it clear that you couldn't put one past him that easily...
...That's not what I went to Israel for...
...We realized that perhaps we would never again •see this land, which in the course of our lives had firmly become part of our souls, with everything good and bad...
...A little history...
...So it is going to be the same thing all over again...
...But that was only the official reason...
...The official listened to us silently, and in her cold police eyes one could read just one thing: "You're lying, you Yid mugs...
...But where do we get the down payment, mortgage, and lawyer to buy a new Santa Maria...
...Of course, officially in the Soviet Union there is no anti-Semitism, and I don't think there are any secret Party circulars that instruct local bodies to whip it up...
...Yuri," I replied...
...Of all the 104 nationalities in the U.S.S.R., Jews were the only ones to lose about 120,000 people in 11 years...
...548 YURI BROKHIN...
...Those who are there can stay, but for a new Jew it is incredibly difficult to squeeze into graduate study...
...That leaves 7 percent...
...We spoke of our fervent desire to be reunited in Tel Aviv with the family of Uncle Isaac...
...It's like Russian roulette...
...And so on...
...The introduction of the education tax proved to be a clear tactical error by the Soviet gov ernment...
...Let the Jews build their socialism without me...
...My wife became a "try-on" maniac...
...And suddenly I thought about myself...
...2) I, as a professional screenwriter, could write scripts for Stanley Kramer or Otto Preminger...
...And as a result, people who just yesterday were not even thinking about Israel and were not going anywhere, have suddenly felt themselves drawn into the orbit of the snowball —and people keep going...
...These are the people who are subjected to the harshest spiritual torture, lose their jobs and are driven into a desperate situation...
...The customers and salesmen looked at them in astonishment...
...I suddenly felt that this country, with its combination of Asian mud and old Biblical stones, is my own, that I am rooting for it and will always live here...
...A frightening threat arose—a Jewish brain drain...
...Finally, we were received by an official, and a little playlet was enacted...
...The editor's eyes narrowed as though he were preparing to catch a flea...
...Every Jew applying to leave may unexpectedly fall into the unlucky 7 percent...
...And that is human nature: the shock from the abundance of goods and food quickly passes, the good things become ordinary, and the bad things become eyesores...
...Of course, the castle did not exactly prove to be the Hilton, but it was quite tolerable for a transit stop...
...YURI BROKHIN At first the sense of solidarity took our breath away...
...Let the whole world know how Soviet Jews who want to leave for Israel are living...
...To whom, Brezhnev or Golda Meir...
...Thirty-seven years old, a tolerable life lying ahead within the regular pattern— no particular ups or downs, generally something in between...
...And your last name...
...Like thousands of other members of the intelligentsia, I was just apathetic toward domestic political problems (a lack of apathy, to my mind, would mean active participation in demonstrations, protests, letters, and not living-room chitchat about the Soviet regime's dirty deeds, chitchat at which we were all great experts but which was good for nothing...
...I rushed over...
...It was all right—they were our simple Soviet Jews...
...This just could not be allowed...
...During this latest war," he write, "the debates about whom to consider a real Jew quieted down, and people stopped demanding allowances and sinecures...
...Quite a few people, of course, felt an awakening of national consciousness and a sincere desire to live on the soil of their ancestors...
...Don't do that, no matter what...
...in Israel they make fun of us while calling us Russians...
...They did not know that the reason for the nervous langhter had been the eight varieties of salami laid out in the coun ter window...
...I do, too, and in this way I assimilate an unfamiliar concept, called "freedom of expression...
...These communications in themselves, on the feedback principle, have become an impetus for the movement...
...They simply became a particle of a snow ball that is now sweeping through the cities of the Soviet Union...
...It is evident that the fate of these 7 percent serves primarily as as bugaboo for the rest of the Jewish population...
...And besides, from the emotional standpoint we had a new opportunity to prolong that amazing state of the unknown, what I would call that healthy spirit of adventurism when you wonder with palpitating heart: "Suppose something extraordinary happens...
...3) meanwhile, we could start some business like a Russian restaurant, a Russian hotel, or a Russian gas station...
...People start to criticize...
...It was no joke: we hid all our furniture, rugs, piano, refrigerator, and chandeliers with the neighbors...
...But over there was the enticing unknown, frightening and sweet, capable of turning one's life topsy-turvy...
...At Schonau Castle there were about 300 people...
...It is difficult to convey the state of emotional exhilaration we experienced in leaving Moscow...
...they also express the views of a stratum of the Jewish intelligentsia that gravitates toward assimilation and is prepared to spearhead anti-Semitic propaganda...
...FATHOMING THE FREE WORLD But events ran ahead of the official's prognosis...
...Your people and my people are all between the Sinai and the Golan Heights," an Odessan replied, in an effort to quiet him down...
...So what is the present exodus of Soviet Jews...
...Of every 1,000 Jews, 825 have a higher education or a specialized secondary education, putting Jews in first place among the 104 nationalities of the U.S.S.R., 50 percent higher than the educational level of the other most developed nationality—the Russians...
...There are people who become active opponents of their own nationality...
...The number of Jews in scientific circles is a subject of special attention from the Party leadership...
...They say that New York is a city that belongs to a completely different country and that we still have to discover the real America...
Vol. 21 • September 1974 • No. 4
